1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to searching for information using search engines.
2. Background
A search engine is an information retrieval system used to locate documents and other information stored on a computer system. Search engines are useful at reducing an amount of time required to find information. One well known type of search engine is a Web search engine which searches for documents, such as web pages, on the “World Wide Web” (also known as “the Web”). Examples of such search engines include Yahoo! Search™ (at http://www.yahoo.com), Microsoft Bing™ (at http://www.bing.com), Ask.com™ (at http://www.ask.com), and Google™ (at http://www.google.com). Online services such as LexisNexis™ and Westlaw™ also enable users to search for documents provided by their respective services, including articles and court opinions. Further types of search engines include personal search engines, mobile search engines, and enterprise search engines that search on intranets, among others.
To perform a search, a user of a search engine typically enters a query into an entry box of the search engine. The query contains one or more words/terms, such as “hazardous waste” or “country music.” The terms of the query are typically selected by the user to as an attempt find particular information of interest to the user. The search engine returns a list of documents relevant to the query. In a Web-based search, the search engine typically returns a list of uniform resource locator (URL) addresses for the relevant documents, which is displayed to the user in a search results page. If the scope of the search resulting from a query is large, the returned list of documents may include thousands or even millions of documents.
Users perform searches using a variety of devices, including mobile devices. Although it is often possible to determine a user's location based on information associated with the device used by the user in performing a search, this determination is generally limited to such device specific information. For searches performed by mobile device users, or other device users, this information may be irrelevant or misleading.